INTRODUCTION 



No people can long exist as an ethnic group without consciously, 

 Dr otherwise, creating a philosophy of things which becomes the 

 common belief of that body of people — becomes their science 

 and religion. The more permanent the people, the more enduring 

 and greater the influence of their system of belief. Viewed in the 

 light of exact science, as we know it, these primitive philosophies 

 become mythologies. A myth may appear to us puerile and with- 

 out any basis in logic, it may appear as a worthless fancy or a child's 

 tale and yet a deeper study of the myth reveals within it the 

 beginning of physics, philosophy and theology. Unfamiliar 

 with the real cause of the phenomenon of mind or matter, the 

 primitive mind, being a reasoning mind seeking to satisfy its 

 curiosity and allay its fears, hypothecates the causes of visible 

 effects in the form of myths. The primitive mind, believing all 

 things the result of some intelligence, personifies and deifies the 

 causes of effects, and thus has arisen the multiplicity of gods and 

 guardian spirits. 



Once crystallized and diffused, myths become working factors 

 of human action. They become the science and religion of the 

 ethnic group which entertains them. They become the basis of 

 reasoning. A treatise on a cause, they become a cause. They 

 become so ingrained in the minds of their believers that, when in 

 other generations they are rivaled by more rational systems, 

 the) 7- are not easily supplanted, for they bear the approval of the 

 religious leaders and the wise men of the generations past. To 

 the great body of people the old myth was a part of common religion ; 

 the new myth which attempted to explain the thunder or the 

 wind's fury was the science of the day and few would have aught 

 to do with it, and here we have a glimpse of the conflict of religion 

 and science. Religion was the conservative element and clung to 

 the sacred beliefs of its fathers; science (so called), which brought 

 the innovation, denied all precedents and struck out afresh to 

 establish new ideas. Years passed by and the religions of the day 

 accepted the new beliefs until the throes of their birth became 

 forgotten in the haze of many years. Then again the critical minds 

 of the time, comparing the experiences of the past and analyzing 

 as best they could, sought to find new explanations that appealed 

 more to their ideas of logic. Then old myths were scoffed at, a 

 new system established, and again the conflict. Nor is it strange 

 that men should be loath to deny that to which they have become 



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